Music research students
Read more about what our Music research students are working on.
Bailey Rudd
-->Music research at Newcastle University
Music has a thriving community of PhD students. All staff in the unit are available as supervisors, and as a large university, many of our most exciting projects come with supervision from other subject areas.
You're encouraged to participate in the department's and the university's wider research culture by involvement with research seminars, including chairing seminars with visiting artists/researchers.
All students are also encouraged to engage fully with professional and academic opportunities - for example attending and presenting at conferences.
Read more about some of the projects that our research students are working on:
Music Postgraduate Researcher
Project Title: The New Me: YouTuber-Musicians, Authenticity, and Influencer Personas
Supervisors: Dr Richard Elliott and Dr Michael Waugh
Bailey Rudd is a session musician, music educator, and cultural musicologist who began researching his PhD in 2025. He has performed internationally and worked with organisations such as the BBC, Arts Council, MOBO Awards, Mercury Prize, and more. He has generated hundreds of thousands of streams through recordings. Bailey teaches instrumental lessons privately and through a community interest company in Northumberland.
Bailey’s thesis explores how YouTubers migrate from entertainment to musical fields, considering how their audience react to possible changes in persona. Cultural phenomena such as authenticity and parasocial relationships are mapped between case studies across different musical genres. Findings will also investigate how artists may intentionally signpost their transition of virtual identity as to retain their audience. A multimedial method collates existing data from several online sources – including social media platforms – alongside collecting primary data from interviews and focus groups. Engaging the research with previous critical work highlights the effects digitality can bring to a modern persona.
Bailey engages in the fields of popular music studies, authenticity, persona, ethnomusicology, and cultural studies. He has previous experience in jazz studies and the sociology of live music scenes.
Bailey's personal interests surround his lovely cat (Misty) and practicing.
